Whipping up a creative brief before you partner with an agency is a no-brainer. You’ve got an idea? You write a brief. Simple. But unless you get a personal kick out of drafting strategy documents, the odds are, you probably don’t enjoy writing them. Because of that, fantastic briefs are pretty rare to come by. Just ask our CEO Shelley, who had a few honest words to say about this some years back. Believe me, she knows a dodgy brief when she sees one.

That said, I’m part of an agency that is fully aware of the reasons why a brief can be bit ‘meh’. If it’s not done well, it might be because the briefer in question is unprepared, can’t be bothered, or quite frankly, doesn’t know how to write one. Still, a project or a campaign doesn’t have a fighting chance without a clear, well-written brief to steer it along the way. But where to begin? And would should you avoid when you’re preparing it?